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Hemodynamic optimization is vital in high risk surgical patients. The aim is to achieve an adequate coupling between oxygen (O 2 ) supply and metabolic demands in an organism under surgical stress, thus preserving aerobic metabolism. Tissue perfusion does not necessarily correlate with arterial blood pressure. Instead, cardiac output is the most important variable that determines tissue oxygen supply.Monitoring based on the pulmonary artery cathe ter is considered the gold standard for cardiac output (CO) assessment. It is an expensive and invasive method with usefulness in various clinical conditions being a matter of debate [1,2].Nowadays, there are minimally invasive hemodynamic monitoring methods available. They are based on the estimation of cardiac output through the analysis of the pulse wave contour, such as the FloTrac system

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